


Five Years.

by Jace_Diaz_Of_Hell



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jace_Diaz_Of_Hell/pseuds/Jace_Diaz_Of_Hell
Summary: Five years, they say when they recruit you, and it just sounds so sweet.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	Five Years.

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea months ago while listening to hotel california and only just NOW managed to write it??? anyways enjoy this creepy little thinkpiece

Cogs in a machine, every single one of them. All of them lesser parts of a greater whole. 

_ “Five years with the Commission and then you retire to a time period of your choosing.” _

Everyone accepts the contract. After all, why wouldn’t they? Five years traveling through time, getting to know futures you only dreamed of and pasts you only read of recorded in (innacurate) textbooks? And then getting to pick any one of those times to settle in, with a pension, for the rest of your life? Why shouldn’t they choose it?

Five can see the sharpness behind the Handler’s smile; in the curve of her red red lips, like a predator going after much wanted prey. Though faded by forty-odd years of distance, he can still remember the same sharpness in his father’s face. 

But he is tired of being alone. He is tired of these smoke-singed ruins. He is sick of the remains of a time gone by crumbling around him. The thought of setting his feet down to have his boot crunch through some victim’s skull  _ again _ makes his stomach turn. 

And so he says a silent apology in his head to Delores, and he accepts the Handler’s deal. 

After all, he’s spent almost forty four years trying to get back to his family. What’s another five years of waiting compared to that?

* * *

He is intimately familiar with the concept of death already. Has seen his brother throw men through windows, has heard otherworldly horrors snapping men’s spines through only a wooden door. He’s seen a boy communing with ghosts, he’s seen his sweet-looking sister look at someone and tell them to  _ fall.  _

Still, though, the Handler makes him go to training. He begrudgingly accepts, if only because all of the subtlety involved in being temporal assassins means the learning will eat up months of his contract. 

* * *

The training is long. It drags on and on. They bring in the same people every day, pulled from the same moment in time again and again, and teach new ways of killing each time. 

Five snaps necks silently. He uses rifles. He uses pistols. He uses knives. He uses grenades. He uses weapon after weapon after weapon, and when he has mastered those, he begins poisons. 

By the time he makes his first contract kill, four months of his contract has been eaten up. 

(Or so he thinks.)

* * *

  
  


The Handler tells Five she has never seen a new assassin as skilled as he is. He wonders if he should tell her how the concept of killing is no new thing, how it’s been a given since they were children ( _ and Five always suspected that those first three nannies never just went away.)  _ He wonders how she didn't already know these things, if she had been watching as long as she had claimed.

Every time she looks at him, the word  _ danger  _ whispers in Five’s mind, but he pushes it down. He sends it away. He spent thirteen years feeling a similar stare crawl down his back. He’s spent his entire life with the feeling of danger weighing down his stomach.

He can do this. He’ll deal with her cold eyes and her too-perfect smile, if it means that he’ll be able to save his siblings. 

* * *

Five is turning into a monster. He knows this. Every time he fires a shot, every time bones crunch under his hands, he can feel himself changing, one bit at a time. 

He looks in the mirror, and he can see the old arrogance in his eyes, knows it’s mingling with the new capability in his body, with the muscle memories of death and with the steely confidence. 

Five will gladly accept this change. He doesn’t care if he grows wings and claws, if he’ll be dragged down to Hell or whatever afterlife may exist. He doesn’t care if he looks in the mirror and never sees anything worthy of love again. He doesn’t care about the trail of bodies he’s leaving in his wake. 

_ He doesn’t care.  _

(That’s what he tells himself, every time, every kill. And this is true: he will do whatever it takes to get his family back. But something inside of him is withering, dying, and he wonders how long it will be before he’s completely unrecognizable. He tells himself it’s only five years, and he can do this.  _ It’s only five years.) _

* * *

It is 1963, and Five is just about ready to kill President Kennedy. The Handler says that he’s been here for just over a year. 

Maybe he would believe her. Maybe he would swallow the lie that she told everyone else, the lie that she herself seemed to believe.

But Five’s power was time- space and time. He couldn’t pinpoint when he realized it. He didn’t know how long it had been. He only knew that it couldn’t possibly have been  _ only  _ a year. He knew that they did their best to keep the workers away from any clocks. That they were never in a place where they could keep track of time accurately for too long. 

And there was a fuzzy sort of awareness, in his mind, that he couldn’t ignore anymore. The knowledge that time was passing. It had been far longer than five years. They’re lying. They want him to stay, they want him trapped, he’ll work for them for forever if they have their way. 

But he can’t use the briefcase to escape. They would know exactly when and where he was, and then they’d come for him, even faster than they would if they used the tracker embedded in his arm. It’s up to his own power.

It takes a long time. An unknowable amount of time that he’ll never get back, but that doesn’t matter. It’s just another chunk of wasted years in the long timeline that is his life. 

He will handle it, he thinks, but Five seethes all the same. 

Then, flipping through the old book, inspecting his equations, the missing pieces fall into place. Five can’t miss another minute- he  _ refuses  _ to miss another moment. 

His hands glow blue, and there’s a ripping, tearing feeling, both in the air and in  _ him,  _ and he  _ shoves,  _ and falls through. 

“Does… anybody see little Number Five, or is that just me?” 

(“It’s been seventeen years,” Luther says, and Five looks at him. He wants to be gentle. He wants to open his mouth and tell them all how much he missed them, how much he loves them. He wants to be kind.

He doesn’t remember how to be gentle.

“It’s been a lot longer than that,” He says, instead of saying anything else.)

* * *

The Handler is scowling as she puts the orders through. 

Five was their best asset, and he had broken his contract. It didn’t make sense to her- he couldn’t deal with a few pesky years before going home? He was that impatient, that he was going to ruin  _ everything?  _

She refuses to let him change this.

The Apocalypse is going to happen. It’s her baby. Her masterpiece. Her Mona Lisa. It’s also going to be the last project she ever works on. 

After all, there’s only a few months left in her contract, and then she’ll be  _ home.  _

(Five years, and then you can retire. That is what they say when you’re recruited, and it sounds so sweet.

  
But in a place out of time, with all its agents displaced in time… how do you  _ know  _ when your five years are up?)


End file.
